The temporary truce that started at the early hours of Saturday is the first of its kind and the best hope we have had so far towards achieving a ceasefire in Syria\u2019s 5-year long civil war.<\/p>\n
Even if it holds only long enough to deliver humanitarian aid to regions where people are starving, the cessation will be seen as higly significant. It came about as a result of a concerted joint \u00a0multinational effort led by the United States and Russia at a time when fear of an international confrontation over Syria is growing by the day.<\/p>\n
There is also an increasing awareness that in order to put Syria on the road to a sustainable solution, it is imperative that the United States and Russia cooperate.<\/p>\n
The confrontational period between the two big world powers is likely to continue far beyond the crisis in Syria but the unpredictibilty of the Syrian situation and the potential consequences of a further escalation have at last reminded everyone the dangers of sleepwalking into a much wider and destructive conflict.<\/p>\n
The decisive moment, when the world realized the volatility of the situation, was when Turkey shot down a Russian plane in November.<\/p>\n
As Dimitry Suslov of Council on Foreign and Defense Policy told us at the European Council on Foreign Relations<\/a> meeting this week, \u201cthe Turkish downing of the Russian plane brought the world to the edge of a war\u201d.<\/p>\n Mr Suslov also warned that if the ceasefire attempts in Syria fail and Turkey and Saudi Arabia go ahead with deployment of troops, this could be a direct cause of war between Turkey and Russia.<\/p>\n Turkey said it supported the ceasefire in principle but did not hide the fact that it did so reluctantly and with reservations. Nevertheless, Turkey has halted its shelling of the PYD positions in nortwest Syria since the start of the truce. Turkish F-16\u2019s were frantically patrolling the Turkish-Syrian border on Saturday.<\/p>\n On the same day, the staunchly pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper came out with a headline<\/a> claiming that the ceasefire was part of an American plan to divide Syria into three parts: a PYD-ruled Kurdish state, an al-Assad regime and the desert regions controlled by ISIS.<\/p>\n The influential columnist of the same newspaper, Abdulkadir Selvi has elaborated further.<\/p>\n